日本語を勉強は楽しいです*

Why study a foreign language?

An impossible question, although I just asked Google AI which told me that such study "improved cognitive skills like memory and multitasking, enhanced career opportunities in a global economy, and deeper cultural understanding and appreciation. It can also lead to increased confidence, better decision-making, and a more enriching travel experience." Who knew?

I took Latin in high school. In my memory the teacher is elderly, the class tedious, the time entirely wasted. When would I ever have occasion to say "Puellas amo ego" or "Britannia insulla est"? Never.

Japanese is something else. I was gobsmacked when I got off a troopship for ten hours in Yokohama harbor in 1955. I was illiterate and speechless. Japanese was both humbling and challenging.

I studied Japanese when I was in the Army in Japan. I studied Japanese in college. Because I did not finish the collage's language requirement, I resumed Japanese study in my mid-50s. I took two weeks in an immersion Japanese course in Japan in my mid-60s. For 1,150 days straight I've been reviewing Japanese on the Duolingo website (a site I heartily recommend for beginners and for review).

All this has meant I have not needed to speak English on visits to Japan. It meant I could lead two tours in Japan. I speak enough that I am able, as a friend said, "exchange ideas in Japanese." I am certainly not—and will never be—fluent. Nor am I able to read a Japanese text without help, which is why I continue to plug away at Duolingo lessons and short story translating.

I do it because, as the headline on this post says, studying Japanese is fun*. So that's why I study a foreign language.

Don't make time for "Time of the Flies"

If you intend to read Time of the Flies by Claudia Piñeiro and translated by Frances Riddle stop reading this blog. There will be spoilers.

Here's is how the publisher describeds the novel, which was shortlisted for the Mario Vargas Llosa Prize for Novels (and one reason why I bought the paperback. "Fifteen years after killing her husband’s lover, Inés is fresh out of prison and trying to put together a new life. Her old friend Manca is out now too, and they’ve started a business – FFF, or Females, Fumigation, and Flies – dedicated to pest control and private investigation, by women, for women. But Señora Bonar, an affluent TV producer, one of her clients, wants Inés to do more than kill bugs – she wants her expertise, and her criminal past, to help her kill her husband’s lover." 

It's an interesting setup and the prose is smoothly translated (and there's a lot of it). I was interested that a woman found guilty of homicide in Argentine can serve just fifteen years. 

Bonar wants Inêz to buy a poison that only she as a licensed pest control company can buy. Complicating the situation is Manca's cancerous breast. With Bonar's money Inés can pay for a life-saving operation. Inéz and Manca discuss the situation at length and Inéz decides to buy the poison (but couldn't the cops trace such a purchase?), charging Bonar $10,000 for the service which she agrees to pay. But Bonar is apparently single so who is she planning to kill? Herself? 

Not with her bags packed, her bridges burned, and a ticket for Singapore in hand.

Another complication: Bonar had a son who was transitioning to female, something Bonar could not accept, and who killed himself. Another complication: Inéz has an estranged daughter Laura who is married and who works as Bonar's housecleaner. 

Just as Inéz and Manca are finally coming down to the story's thrilling conclusion, Piñeiro interrupts the forward movement once again for a little essay, one of several, this one on transphobic people. "Feminism has to be committed to gender freedom, to radical equality, and to alliances with other minoritarian positions, sexual dissidents. Transphobic feminism is no feminism, that cannot happen." Okay, but is this the best place for the discussion? I almost threw the book against the wall.

Maybe the way to enjoy Time of the Flies is by skipping these little didactic essays. I couldn't and didn't and regret the time I spent reading it.

About the garden in "Kanazawa in the Rain"

Story Sanctum's illustration for my story Kanazawa in the Rain

Last summer an online publication, Story Sanctum (storysancturm.com), published my short story Kanazawa in the Rain.

Kanazawa is a small city on the west coast of Japan. It was not important enough to be bombed during WWII, so a lot of pre-war and older charm remains. During the Tokugawa Era (1603-1868) it was the Maeda family's capital, and the Maeda family was one of the richest in the country.

Rated (by the Japanese) as one of Japan’s three most beautiful gardens, Kenrokuen is next to the reconstructed Kanazawa Castle. The name means “having six factors”: spaciousness, tranquility, artifice, antiquity, water sources and magnificent views. The garden has an area just over 28 ares and is located in central Kanazawa. The Maeda family, who ruled the Kaga Fief (the present Ishikawa and Toyama prefectures) in feudal times, established and maintained the garden.

My characters, an older, solitary American man and a middle-aged Japanese waitress, visit Kenrokuen and the villa on the grounds that the lord built for his mother. Late in the story the man compares the villa to the waitress's apartment. They're different.

Story Sanctum asked AI to create an illustration for the story, which it did. Here however is a picture of the real garden, from the Visit Kanazawa website (https://visitkanazawa.jp/en/attractions/detail_10106.html). 

Kenrokuen in the spring.

 

I've changed a character's unsatisfactory name.

A low-income housing project building in Harlem like the one Matt and Karen move into.

Although I believed my novel Matt and Dee Move into Harlem was finished and polished, proofread and edited, I grew dissatisfied with Dee's name. The longer I thought about it, the more I thought that it did not give the impression I wanted of a young white wife from a small Ohio city. 

It did not help Dee's case that after a year of sending out queries to literary agents, not one had responded positively. I concluded she needed a new, more appropriate name and, because I was making the change, to reconsider the title and review the entire manuscript.

The character is now Karen. Through the magic of the internet, changing every Dee to Karen took less than a minute. And the book's title is now Matt and Karen Move to (not into) Harlem.

I've recently read two novels that impressed me by the writing or translation: Free Love by Tessa Hadley and We Do Not Part by Han Kong, translated by E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris. Rereading my manuscript with those fresh examples in mind helped me see innumerable places where I could cut extra words or add a telling adjective.

I'm about a quarter into revising the book and it seems to be going well. Wish me luck,

Good intentions can take you only so far

For the last ten years most of my blog posts have been book reviews. I have every good intention of reviewing every book I read.

But I don't. 

I make time for my own writing, to maintain my Duolingo Japanese streak, and to translate Japanese fiction which I began doing as a way to improve my ability to read. 

Because there is often quite a gap between reviews (my last review was almost a month ago; the one before it appeared August 13) I have decided to make the time and post more often. These may not be reviews, but they will, I hope, be related to my reading, writing, and Japanese study.

For example, I told a writer friend that a literary magazine had just accepted one of my short stories and added that it was an online publication. I was pleased it was accepted, disappointed that it would not appear in a physical magazine,  She also had had a story accepted by an online magazine but was not distressed. She pointed out that because her story is online she can link to it and potentially attract more readers than the physical magazine has readers as people pass the link on to friends.

Obviously a handful of literary magazines have respectably large circulations, but (so far) those have not accepted my stories. I've decided I'm happy to be online and will post the link as soon as the story is available. And I will aggressively seek to have my stories published anywhere.

Enjoy, and comments are always welcome.